Time of Our Lives by Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka

Author:Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

Fitz

I DON’T KNOW how to read this girl. Or possibly girls in general. But right now, Juniper’s the riddle. Yesterday she texts me for hours while we’re on the road, exchanging favorite words and cities, swapping family stories and photos of the highway. Today, nothing. Well, not nothing—she replies to my texts. But I notice long pauses in between her replies, no punctuation, and none of the ebullience or humor of our conversation yesterday.

I know I’m reading into it, and I kick myself for playing into introspective-hipster-boy tropes. Teenage ginger Joseph Gordon-Levitt decoding the texts of Zooey Deschanel or Zoey Deutch or other Zoeys while wandering New York City. Find me a Joy Division T-shirt and fancy coffee, and I’m ready for my close-up.

I really could go for a good coffee, though.

I’m on my own while Lewis interviews for one of the finance jobs he hopes will keep him from Tilton, New Hampshire. Five hours of interviews for Bright Partners, one of the top VCs in the country, he told me in the hotel this morning, though really it was more like a monologue to himself in the mirror. I thought I caught uncharacteristic nervousness in the waver of his voice. He told me he’d text me for dinner, and emptily I wished him luck. Despite the friendlier moments we’ve had on this trip, I still don’t love the idea of him taking a job in New York.

I have no college tours today while Lewis interviews. Though I could have made up yesterday’s NYU visit, I found myself interested in the city instead. I decided to walk downtown on Broadway, which is when I began texting Juniper.

It’s not worth speculating why her replies have changed, I remind myself. Crossing from street corner to corner in packs of pedestrians, it dawns on me that I’m halfway through this trip. In just five days, I’m returning to New Hampshire, to home-cooked meals and familiar friends and the unchanging prospect of SNHU. Those things are your future, I find myself repeating. They’re important.

Because, I guess, part of me does want more. More new cities. More time with a hypothetical girl who could potentially be interested in architecture and possibly, theoretically want to live “everywhere.”

It’s better I don’t turn this funny light-speed friendship with Juniper into something more. We’re inchoate. Yet unformed and undefined due to newness. It would only hurt worse when I have to return to my life of waiting for the inevitable. Because I do have to return.

It’s why I could muster only a hollow “good luck” to Lewis. It won’t be him home with Mom. It’ll be me.

I know I could have years until Mom declines. I could commit to other schools in other cities. Except I won’t do what Mom did. I won’t go to some other school and then withdraw when her condition worsens. I won’t fall in love with a college or city and have to leave. It’s the same with Juniper. It’s better in the long run if things don’t progress.

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